Botswana Chess Federation (BCF) hopes to host their first local event early February.
BCF’s secretary general Mokwadi Tingwane said they have been doing online games hence they will now be doing over the board chess.
He said: “Last year we did our utmost to follow health regulations, we successfully organized and hosted tournaments by adhering to covid19 protocols. We limited the number of athletes required, deploying SHE officers at our venues, the use of masks all the time and we shall continue to do the same for this year.”
“We intend not to lose any of our sponsors in these trying times, we are going to have over the board tournaments as well as online ones as they come in handy in the observance of Covid-19 protocols,” opined Tingwane.
He said that they took the decision to start on the local tournaments whilst awaiting the mother board for activities for this year. He said: “As for international activities we are guided by our mother body of Africa Confederation and FIDE, of late they publish them late and it is up to us as federations to see to it that we participate.”
“There is the Africa Online individual chess championship scheduled for the 25th to the 29th of January, hopefully we shall register our national team,” noted Tingwane.
Moreover, Tingwane said that he is happy with how clubs are doing currently. He said “Clubs play an integral part in the growth of chess, some have continually organized online chess to keep players active, as well as the normal tournaments we know.”
